


Losers Read Tarot

by nagasvoice



Category: The Losers (2010)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, M/M, Tarot, Team Losers Tarot
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-08-23
Updated: 2015-01-14
Packaged: 2018-02-14 05:23:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 14,655
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2179542
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nagasvoice/pseuds/nagasvoice
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Big kudos to mific for the amazing art on the Tarot deck sie created.<br/>This story was inspired by that deck for the Tarot Card Bang of the 2014 Ante-Up Losers Big Bang<br/>See it here, along with notes on interpretations:<br/>http://archiveofourown.org/works/1671986/chapters/3549743</p>
    </blockquote>





	1. Ten of Swords

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [The Losers Tarot](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1671986) by [mific](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mific/pseuds/mific). 



> Big kudos to mific for the amazing art on the Tarot deck sie created.  
> This story was inspired by that deck for the Tarot Card Bang of the 2014 Ante-Up Losers Big Bang  
> See it here, along with notes on interpretations:  
> http://archiveofourown.org/works/1671986/chapters/3549743

 

 

Cougar turns over the card for the present day and stares at the ten of swords. He blinks at it, motionless, throat closed, unable to explain to his client what it means. Slowly, automatically, his hand lifts, lays down the next one, the card showing what crosses the situation--the barriers, the difficulties--and reveals the Tower. He tilts down his hatbrim in salute, honoring the message, looking for words... trying for honesty that is positive, kind, encouraging.

It’s hard, because the flare of stark reflex is to reach out, grab the client by his shirt collar, spin him quick out of the chair before somebody shoots him from outside. Somebody could be lurking in the crazy carnival shadows, right now. The impulse spikes so sharply that Cougar wants to sweep the man down under the cover of the table, however flimsy.

Like, _now._

Turn out the lights, crawl out the back of the booth, not even exposing himself to hostile eyes long enough to put up his closed sign.

He stays still, instead. It’s less noticeable to outside eyes. Flipping off the lights will draw attention.

Cougar doesn’t flinch when the music player jerks by itself from random play of quiet shakuhachi flute music over to an entirely new function, announcing some local radio station. Live performance, even. Over scratchy random noise the announcer is shouting something about a big church tent revival.

"Hallelujah!" A soprano yodels across six notes with a chorus in full swing behind a gospel preacher howling and creating about the End Times.

The evening sky had been clear an hour ago; no longer. A gust of cold wind flattens the curtains of Cougar’s flimsy pop-up shelter and streams away outside, taking paper coupons and ad sheets in Spanish and menus from the food trucks and grabbing tokens from the duck-shooting gallery parked in front of his own stand.

Half the sky is visible with the curtains flying horizontally.

A crackle of electricity arrows in circular branches among the clouds heading toward them. Everything is moving but the cards remain stuck tight, impossibly rigid, on the table. The wind somehow curls in, whacks him like a fist upside the head, making him sway in his chair. Behind him, the wind knocks down the cheap florist vase of white flowers.

The lightning shocks through the same pathway three times in the clouds, giving everything a gray light. The jolt blacks out all the lightbulbs on the carny lot for a good three minutes.

Slowly, crackling a bit, generators kick on, and most of the strings of lamps come back on. One of the rides has stopped already, the others grind down too.

Cougar turns his gaze over to the back of his shelter, where the curtains have stopped being dramatic. Things have shifted a bit where they were hanging… the black cane, top hat, and black umbrella are all a little crooked behind the little wooden Maddalena shrine. The vase has broken, the flowers scattered on and under the shrine, thrown down in front of the top hat. Uncle Legba can be a rough customer, opening the way for the other loas, who are by all the evidence much worse. Legba knows human limits better, perhaps, as he guides departing spirits from memorial and funeral services, among other things.

Cougar has only learned about some of the syncretic partially-Catholic traditions out of desperation, to show respect as an uninvolved civilian. He’s been told he could be a powerful horse for the loas, but he has declined the invitation very politely, claiming other obligations and duties.

At a big street fair in Juarez, a bent old brown lady confronted him--she’d been drinking rum and smoking a short stogie and stomping circles before the clapping crowd--and she angrily admonished him if he won’t take the invitation, then he better devote a whole lot more attention to his own craft. Stop giving off so much of that dangerous “bored and available” vibe. She didn’t have to warn him that the loas don't always _ask_ first. Loud consent may be big among the more-Christian groups, but standards aren’t as high elsewhere. Some of the less-friendly loas make no such assumptions.

Perhaps his devotion to the Mater had been strong enough barrier against the bad kinds so far--even if he sometimes knew bad kinds were out there. He felt it. But he never had spirits of malevolence or evil push their way in here, in spite of how ignorant visitors regard him and his stand. No matter how the evangelists and preachers screamed about witchcraft and pointed at pictures of him when there were city council meetings in small towns, revoking the permits and booting out the little carnival for a wide variety of sins.

Looking at the hat and the umbrella, Cougar taps a finger to the brim of his own humbler cowboy hat in grave salute, and takes a deep breath.

Finally Cougar tilts up the hatbrim, gazing into the wide blue eyes across the table.

At least the Army brat is able to see something big is swirling in here along with the sudden blasts of cold stormfront air. The guy gives a little grimace, but he doesn't laugh or crack a joke, not the way Cougar expected.

He just stares at Cougar, peering under the hat, trying to stare into Cougar’s eyes.

Cougar stares back, solemnly. Well, things outside are getting ridiculously dramatic.

The client is a rangy blonde kid in equally ridiculous round Lennon glasses. He is not moving, not even twitching. This is a change. He was laughing when his unkind, drunk buddies pushed him in Cougar’s doorway, as if they double-dog-dared him to go in. He’d been highly amused, practically dancing, a little smashed, waving his hands and jiggling his boot toes and moving constantly, bubbling with comments all the way through cutting the deck of Tarot cards in his long pale fingers. He just couldn’t sit still, until Cougar laid out the card for the distant past--the Queen of Swords reversed.

When Cougar explained that one, his client jerked violently all over and sat quiet.

The column of cards to one side, ranging from the past through to the future, show the Queen of Swords, the Devil, Death, up to the Heirophant, all reversed. The circle next to it looks just as bad in the minor Arcana. Basically, his client is a mess. Chained in erroneous beliefs, unable to free himself in the face of generation-crushing transformations that will take down kings and peasants alike, while he’s trying to work with multiple indifferent or incompetent authority figures in conflict. Past time for this man to give up his illusions, whatever they are.

His motionless client clearly knows the trad Rider Deck interpretations enough to guess at the hint: _Get the hell out of Dodge. Right now._

The man has startling bright blue eyes the same color as the sweep of harsh sky out here in these otherwise bleak towns. It’s a strange color, too bright in that sunburnt face. In better light, it would be the color of a deep Caribbean sea. The color of one of those deep, cool grottoes that leads to caves into the coral beneath the reef.

Cougar has to banish a highly inappropriate image of the guy popping up out of all that blue ocean, shaking water out of his spiky hair and laughing and imitating the squealing noises of a dolphin while he pulls baggy faded trunks back up his ridiculously well-cut abs.

If his client happens to be broadcasting some loud hint where the guy has been recently, Cougar is not indulging in the rest of that particular image. Not now.

The client blinks away, frowning a little, and finally he resumes talking. Jake, that’s his name. Jake's normally fancy vocabulary disappears. Cougar learns, in clipped simple words, that he was getting uncomfortably accurate. And yes, the Queen was not just some wild stab in the dark--that card was merely a piece of old, familiar, weary information for his client.

The Queen reversed, a hard widowed woman, emotionally distant, inclined toward hasty unwise decisions, impulsive, easily angered-- all spot-on. Apparently that had been the persona of many of his foster mothers.

Jake gives a big toothy smile that should have charmed everybody, but it didn't fool Cougar at all. Jake says he wasn’t an easy child to foster. He knew too much about chemistry and physics, he explains, tilting his head sideways, waiting for Cougar to smile back, to ease up, to relax.

Cougar feels all his muscles coiling tighter.

Dramatic emphasis by lightning bolt doesn’t change the meaning of what’s in front of them. It just ramps up how important it is.

Most evenings, working the little carnival as their second-string fortune teller, he's set up in the colorful shadows of the Spider and the Tilt-A-Whirl and he endures the stink of burnt sugar and barbecue by the food trucks for the sake of the increased foot traffic in this slot. Cougar expects his clients to be the usual raucous drunks, the usual tearful gamblers desperate for a break at the machines or the tables, the usual retirees with hopelessly sick relatives, or those grieving for the voices of the departed. He’s just the impulse buy, not the main attraction in the crystal ball category.

Most evenings it is just working with what the clients bring him. It stays human, quiet, almost random. He spends his patience listening to the astonishing woes of clients, letting them lead him, reaching out for words that might help them best, searching for phrases that might give them something useful to get on with life. He's just not inclined to be the front-line whiz-bang magic-show palm-reader, which would have been more profitable. He isn’t reassuring the people so they will tip him better, or guessing at dreams, or impatiently giving them what they want to hear. Disrespecting his craft like that tips him further toward becoming a plaything of the loas, as he was warned, and he’s too close to that as it is.

Respecting the powers of real craft meant he paid all the usual burdens of honesty. He didn’t pull his space rent as well as those who could intimidate clients, who could make florid imitations of guessed-at ghosts, and do properly impressive grifts, table-tipping, illusions and stage magic. No point. He’s too _tired_ for games.

Those long, sweaty _human_ nights weren’t the shifts that earned him such caution from fellow carnival workers, or from his own kin among the Spanish-speaking Travelers.

Nights like _this_ had nothing to do with the Tarot. Nights when the energy came wracking through his hands, crawling like sparks over the nerves of his back, pushing him hard into harsh words that cracked through the tent in violent spasms of terrible insight. Too often, words in the service of some otherworldly intent, something with its own agenda, for good or ill, and it was sometimes anybody’s guess whether it might or might not help the human in front of him. Often enough, Cougar heard his own struggle for a useful phrase echoed on a bigger scale by the energy crackling through this little tent, as if the spirits intervening here were no more expert about helping out human beings than he was--no better at it than anyone else embodied on earth.

On nights like this one, when the clients brought with them the kind of spirits that raged in storms through this tent, very strange things happened.

People have told him it’s a curse, shaking their heads over him. Various relatives have held ceremonies to clear the taint of the war and the Devil from him, and it hasn’t changed a thing.

Tonight was not going to be a fun night.

Jake says, "You've got that lemon-sucking face going here, I guess the rest of it sounds pretty bad, huh?"

Cougar lifts an eyebrow at him in disbelief.

"What? You think I never heard it from anybody else before? You think people didn't tell me I was fucking up their pretty framework, like a great big fucking boulder in the middle of their highway to fame and fortune? Like, maybe dynamiting my big rockin' ass would solve all their little problems?"

Jake's ass does rock, it was impossible not to notice that much, but frankly it's so much of a distraction that Cougar has to grit his teeth to drag his sorry brain back on task.

What the hell is _wrong_ with him, anyway, that every time he looks at this guy he’s reacting with all the wrong parts of the body?

It’s all ridiculous.

Brain, words, we need _words_ now, give the client an _explanation._

“What? How bad are we talking?” Jake reaches across the table, cups his big hand around Cougar’s shoulder. “You okay?”

It’s like getting hit with a direct jolt of that storm electricity.

Words come, lots of them at once, too much to wedge into his tight throat, all of them big and jagged and rude. Just too appropriate for this guy. That is also amusing, in that bone-dry Uncle Legba sense of humor. It may not be the sort of humor that appeals to many humans.

Words dump out of Cougar’s mouth in a rush. "Do you know who wants to kill you?"

 

 

 


	2. The Moon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Many interesting interpretations of this card suggest lots of ways people can fail to see past their own illusions...

“You know, when the guys started talking up this big scary-ass gypsy hoodoo thing, this is not what I had in mind,” Jake says.

“Yeah?” Cougar says. “Me neither.”

“What, you don’t whistle or sing in the shower or anything?”

“No.”

Cougar puts up his forefinger in a warning gesture to be quiet, pops open the little bathroom trailer window for ventilation the way he usually does to dry things out after a shower. He turns off the water, he steps out, dries off, gets dressed in his sleep shorts. Moving slowly, he washes up four pairs of underpants in the sink, and hangs it all out to dry on the line outside the trailer door. That makes his skin crawl, he can feel the eyes watching. Then he goes back into the kitchen. Starts laying bacon strips in the skillet, eventually cracks a couple of eggs in the skillet, and he’s just reaching for the pepper when the trailer door slams open.

“Hola, Roque,” he says, and proceeds to grind pepper onto the eggs bubbling away. He looks up, blinking. Roque just seems to get bigger every time.

“ _Where is that sonuvabitch?”_

Roque doesn’t need guns very often. The knives in his hands are heavy enough and long enough to be swords in anybody else’s hands. He’s got the guns anyway, hanging in heavy bandoliers over his fatigues. Nobody here is likely to ask him why he’s armed outside the legal confines of the base where he is assigned, because that’s about four hundred miles away.

Cougar just aims a raised eyebrow at him. He holds up the peppermill, waves at the little fridge. _“?Quieres desayuno?”_

“Hellfire,” Roque says, and crashes back out, down the two steps, and he yells out at the general parking lot, “Not here, you fucking’ idiots, get moving. He musta made it out to the cars!”

Cogar shrugs, crosses himself, slides the cooked eggs onto a paper plate, and cracks two more eggs into the skillet.

“Sonuvabitch,” Roque says, crashing back up the steps and inside the door. “That fucking goddamn idiot Wade.”

Cougar slides drained bacon onto the paper plate, picks it up, and passes it to the big guy with the bandoliers and the scar over one eye. At least Roque has sheathed one of his knives.

“You got no idea how lucky you are, you bastard, getting out when you did.”

Cougar smiles at him. This is just the simple truth of things. Roque says it every time, too.

The bacon is gone in two chomps, the eggs in a third. Roque drops the plate on the floor, slams outside, yells back at Cougar, “You find him, _you let me know,_ you sneaky bastard.”

Cougar stands in the doorway, picks up the fallen plate, gestures a salute at the departing figure in green, and closes the door. He doesn’t bother latching it, though. Then he cracks another two eggs into the skillet, it’s all he has left. He’s sitting quietly at the little bench, buttering toast, mopping up egg juice, when he hears the boots crunching angrily across the gravel.

“Sonuvabitch,” Roque shouts outside. “You guys lost him, you go find him!” Then he’s bashing open the door again. “You got any more of those eggs?”

Cougar gestures at two over-easy eggs and toast on another paper plate across from him. It’s not like he doesn’t know Roque’s habits by now.

“Goddamn, _that’s more like it,”_ Roque says, and takes it outside, shovels in the food with the wedges of toast. He shouts some more between bites. Finally Roque yells at the trailer, “Hey, whatcha need from the store?”

“Ice cream, eggs, coffee,” Cougar says.

“Tomorrow, and you better still be here.”

Cougar taps a finger at the brim of his hat, knowing he’s perfectly visible to Roque outside.

“Sonuvabitch, when I get hold of that goddamn Wade--” and Roque is stomping away, plate discarded in a trash can this time.

Cougar gets up, closes the door, starts washing the utensils and skillet.

Roque’s crashing boots are perfectly audible, coming back, and Cougar sighs, but he doesn’t stop. When he hangs up the skillet and turns around, Roque is standing in the open doorway.

“You heard me, right? _Tomorrow,”_ Roque growls.

Cougar taps his forefinger against his hatbrim in salute.

Roque leans closer, menacing. “You ain’t asked _what_ we’re looking for.”

Cougar shrugs. “Wade, you said.” He waves it off indifferently, as if any kind of idiocy could be expected from that quarter. Which is pretty much true.

“You know Clay’s bringing him up on court-martial charges?”

Cougar blinks.

“Yeah, you fucker, he’s got proof for once, and Wade is _looking_ for the guy what gave him that proof, and ain’t my job _or yours_ to stand in between ‘em,” Roque growls.

Cougar shrugs again.

Roque snaps out his empty hand, grabbing, and Cougar just slides aside from it smoothly, twitching aside and shifting an evasive step away toward the front of the trailer.

“What is this?” Roque growls. “Since when--”

Cougar nods at the doorway.

“Oh, now you’re all up on your dignity, you don’t want the rest of ‘em hearing you lose your shit, huh?”

Cougar shakes his head. “Clay,” he says, and points above Roque’s shirt pocket. “You’d make him a better SIC than Wade, if you got a clean record.”

Roque narrows his eyes.

“Lead ‘em a good chase if you don’t want ‘em finding Wade’s kryptonite,” Cougar says.

Roque’s mouth twists. “Hell yeah. Hell yeah.” This time, he reaches out more slowly, and Cougar lets him grab. Roque twists his fingers into Cougar’s hair. He gives it a little jerk. “Let you off tonight, have one of the boys drop by with groceries tomorrow so I’m not tempted to take advantage. Goddamn, the things I do for that asshole.”

Cougar rests both hands on Roque’s chest, smooths the rumpled collar of his blouse, eases the hang of the banderillo on his left shoulder. Frowns a little, checking the other points of inspection. He puts one hand out to the table, bending down, folding up on his knees, when Roque stops him with another jerk on his hair.

“No,” Roque says, sharply. “You’re right, that mouth of yours is just too goddamn tempting.”

“Oh,” Cougar says, and feels the hand let go of him, and then Roque is gone, banging out the door, slamming it shut after him.

Cougar takes some deep breaths, shifts, sags down onto the little kitchen bench.

When he looks up again, he’s staring into the blue eyes of the guy they’re hunting. At least he’s crawled across the floor, below view of the trailer’s windows.

“Is that what I thought it was?” Jake whispers.

“Yes,” Cougar says.

Jake’s head recoils back on his neck, and Cougar looks away, not willing to watch the slow development of the usual expression of disgust or fear or whatever the hell it is. Jake starts to ask something about three times, and stops himself each time. “You just saved my life.”

Cougar shrugs. “For now. He’ll come back tomorrow. He’ll want to be here awhile.”

“You think they’ll give up looking for me here in the parking lot long enough--”

Cougar shakes his head. “Not the way to bet.” He stands up and unlatches the locks on the storage container under the twin bed, and the long cabinet next to the bathtub, and the overhead cabinets above the stove. He starts shifting bulky stuff around, and gestures Jake to stay where he is, under the kitchen table. In ten minutes, by the clock, he closes other things up again, and directs Jake how to sneak into the storage under the bed. He’s sitting on the bed reading a book when somebody pounds on the door.

When he looks out of the little window next to the door, he sees one of Roque’s young Hispanic guys on the stairs. He opens the door wide, nothing to see here.

“¿Hola?” Cougar says.

“Clay called, Roque said to tell you he ain’t gonna make it back here tomorrow with the new guy going AWOL on us. No eggs or ice cream, sorry.” He doesn’t sound it. Which means he was probably the designated delivery driver, he’s not going to do it, and he won’t be sorry to report Cougar’s absence to Roque if, indeed, Cougar has decided to take off to his next destination, against his prior solemn word to Roque.

Cougar nods. It’s not hard to see the resemblance between this kid and himself about twenty years younger, and probably a hundred times lighter in absurd mental baggage. This guy is just jealous, no conflicts about it. “Have yourself a good ride,” Cougar says, and means it across all the possible ironic layers the kid might be able to understand. Being one of Roque’s sorta-exes means never having to apologize to the current lying cocksucker.

The kid utters a few cusswords, spitting them.

Cougar gives a little shrug and a wave, steps back, closes the door. He’s hoping to miss the flash of anger across that pretty face, but no, he wasn’t quick enough for that.

He gives another sigh, picks up his book, and waits five minutes before silently putting it down again. He picks up his shotgun from the rack over the bed, loading in shells. He opens the door, gliding down the steps and around the back, where he finds the kid holding up an empty gas can, looking surprised. It was full of water before the kid picked it up, chained there as bait for exactly the stunt he tried to pull.

Cougar lowers the shotgun to aim at the ground in front of the kid. “Go. Get out of here. Before I call him.”

He doesn’t even have to waste a load before the kid is running away.

Cougar goes back inside, considers emptying the gun, instead lays it across the bed near at hand. He picks up his old brick of a cell phone, sits down on the bed, calls, leaves a message. “Roque, sorry to say bye a little early. Wanted another day here, but not when your latest jealous bitch tried to burn me out. Guess Wade is teaching all your guys some bad habits.” Then he unlatches the locks under the bed, opens up the side door.

“Okay, _now_ we go,” he says.

Jake pulls himself out of the narrow space, crawls on the floor under the kitchen table. “You want me to stay back in hiding, or help you hook up?”

Cougar hesitates. “Let me get a look outside first. You know how to hook up trailer lights?”

“I do,” Jake says.

“Depends how close this guy’s buddies are,” Cougar says then. He picks up the gun, opens the breach, shows it to Jake. Then he hands it down to Jake, and stands up and starts getting some clothes on. Not the fortuneteller billowy shirt and tight pants, but the regular working guy jeans and plaid shirt and the worn boots.

“I got a stash in an apartment in town, we could--” Jake offers in a soft, careful voice.

“Any of those guys know about it?”

“Maybe Roque,” Jake admits.

“They’ll boobytrap it if they want you this bad,” Cougar says.

“Even when Roque doesn’t _want_ them to find me?”

“First thing he’ll do, it proves he’s on Wade’s side. He doesn’t know how the court’s going to find, maybe he has to live with the guy after that.”

Jake just stares up at him from under the table. “Shit, shit, shit.”

Cougar pauses to roll up his shirt sleeves. “Cheer up, Roque and I go way back.”

“Why aren’t you just calling him to come get me?”

Cougar feels a tickle of laughter in his chest, but he doesn’t let it out. “Because he and I go way back.”

“Cougar?”

“Mmm?” Cougar brushes his hair in a few fierce quick jabs, braids it off, ties it with an elastic. Puts the hat on.

“Thanks.”

“ _De nada,”_ Cougar says. “Don’t feel special. I wouldn’t hand over the Devil to him for Wade.” Then he goes outside to get things organized to hook up the trailer to his battered old pickup.

It turns out Jake can curl up into ridiculous small spaces, which is good for letting him literally ride shotgun on the passenger side of the pickup. He’s even flexible enough to be able to wiggle into the narrow space behind the truck’s seats like a kid, huddle under a couple of saddle blankets Cougar flung there. Those were from the brief period Cougar did some rodeo circuit under a different name. He’s not sure if he should resume that identity, because it was damn hard being on the injury list so often.

Traveling on the circuit didn’t stop Roque dropping in on him whenever it suited Roque’s whims, either. Sometimes that was a good thing, days when Cougar was stuck somewhere getting over broken bones and wondering how he was going to buy food in a week. Other times, not so great. Times when Roque came thundering in like a tank and busted up anything in his way, including grabbing Cougar and throwing him down on his knees in front of his brothers, in front of employers, on front of anybody, anywhere. Not so good when somebody bravely stepped up and intervened as if Cougar was a battered boyfriend, so Cougar had to speak up to save them from Roque, to make them calm down and go away and let Cougar get on with it as best he could.

He’s not so stupid as to think this guy, Jake, is just going to stand aside if Roque decides he wants to prove something about owning Cougar’s ass now, years after he had any regular visiting rights. Jake will not just go away.

Talk about clash of the Titans, Jake is just as big, but he’s rangier, he’s got longer arms, he’s not built so heavily as Roque’s boxer density, and he probably has one tenth of the fighting mean Roque has. The guy with the scar was practicing in barroom brawls in the worst places on Earth before Jake was born.

It’s a little strange that Cougar no longer finds that much power under his hands so incredibly sexy. It’s just… sad.

All that, and what has the poor man found to do with it? He’s outranked, he does what Wade tells him to do, which means going off-mission for Wade’s real bosses, and praying that whatever shit Jake dug up on it all will _finally_ get Wade booted out or erased.

Unlikely, in Cougar’s estimation, if Wade’s sooper-sekrit boss, Max, is as powerful as Roque seems to believe. More likely Max will get the Company to do something to Clay instead. Burn him, betray him, there’s a thousand different ways to shut down an embarrassment like Clay--but just bet they’ll keep Wade, instead of having the sense to realize what a liability he is, when they ought to keep Clay instead. It’s dumb. Clay would perform exactly as stated in assignments and be far more effective at it, and no off-the-record gossip anywhere. But no, they think they’re _hiding_ something when they get Wade to go off-mission, as if his entire crew doesn’t flap like a dozen sheets in the wind, bragging in every bar they visit.

Roque has bitched about it ever since somebody reassigned Wade and that whole stinkin’ team to put them under Clay’s supervision, with Roque staring up from the underside in horror. If they ever thought that would keep Max or Wade in check, boy, were they wrong.

It’s even possible that shortly Roque will be on the run himself, and if they’re all unlucky, dragging Clay along with, both of _them_ trying to get some help from _Cougar._

Cougar has, after all, been living this way a lot longer. The sniper walked out of the setup in Wade’s team years ago, refused to come back, evaded Company retaliation, no matter what the rules or the incentives or the pleading. He spent two years in Dakar and another year in Chile rather than return to the service. By the time they wanted to jail him for going AWOL, he was happy to walk in and serve the time, and offered to explain all those massacres to the reporters he’d come to know in Africa. Somehow things settled out that his sentence was reduced to a couple of weeks and then he was encouraged to disappear out in the big dusty traveling circuit among the bucking horses. He still checks in sometimes with the reporters, most of whom have stayed busy in a lot of places besides Africa. He’s heard Syria is impossible.

Cougar cracks open a water bottle from the cooler. He bought the ice when he stopped for gas the first time. Driving one-handed, he holds the bottle down low where Jake can get it. “Your recharger plug is green now,” he says.

“Oh great,” Jake says, taking the bottle, and then the cord and the cigarette-lighter plug. “Knew this baby would be useful. Now I can check on maps on my phone. And yes, we have signal out here in the big empty, it’s amazing, whooo baby, we are golden, you sweet sweet thing you--”

“What kind of computer do you need to get?” Cougar says. He doesn’t even try to understand the reply, which burbles on for quite awhile. He just passes back another of many, many packages of beef jerky for his passenger. The candy is already gone. He had no idea he had a serious power consumer on his hands, and he will not be making the same mistake again. The trouble is that even a jaded interstate highway convenience store clerk might notice when one guy buys that much candy and dried fruit and jerky and dry cereal and sandwiches and shampoo and just sheer stuff. He’s been trying to sparse it out between frequent stops, but there’s a limit when the only wellwater on tap is three hundred miles apart.

“How much will it cost?”

More impenetrable babble, which runs down to, “Oh, I think a good four thousand dollars should do a decent setup, depends where we go just what kind of rig I need to hook into, but yeah, that should do it if we’re working on the cheap and I don’t have to set up a full-on cable or antenna rig up on the roof. I can get that sorted out tomorrow, easy, when we get into El Paso. Housekeeping cash, I guess we’d need, what, maybe a thousand a week or something? Gotta keep current on your truck insurance, right? I can transfer money over a couple days if you need some right away.”

“You are hacking this money?” Cougar says, frowning.

“Oh, not now, that’d draw attention. No, this is old rainy-day stuff nobody knows about. Always keep stashes, right?”

“Right,” Cougar says, still frowning.

“Hey, I figured out after the first disaster with Wade’s bunch going off the reservation, I needed to get my shit together, and keep some maintenance funds aside. Oh boy, that was real clear right from the first bit, going out blowing up labs full of mutant monkeys. You know this Max guy is totally in orbit way outside Pluto and only comes in far enough toward reality to visit the Oort Cloud on random Thursdays when he’s playing Phisbin, right?”

“Phisbin? That’s in old Star Trek,” Cougar says, puzzled. “Aren’t you too young for--”

“Congratulations, you may be a nerdboy,” Jake says, and he’s grinning under the dusty blanket. “And I may be in love.”

“Don’t,” Cougar says.

“Don’t what? Claim you as one of my people?”

Cougar frowns. “Kid about love.”

Both of Jake’s eyebrows fly up.

“There’s not enough of it as it is, without making fun of it,” Cougar complains angrily, unable to stop it, even though he’s appalled at himself, at what’s coming out of his mouth. He clamps his mouth shut tight, adjusts his sunglasses under the hatbrim, and looks strictly ahead into the glare.

“Okay,” Jake says. “Okay then. Loud and clear, roger that. So, Phisbin, right, is this made-up game thing they used in original Trek, and then some folks in--” he rambles on about people taking it all seriously enough to work out rules and have tournaments at conventions. Somewhere in the middle of all that, he pauses to draw breath, and he asks, “So, hey, how did you end up with the fortune-telling gig anyway?”

“I had seizures at a street fair,” Cougar says.

“Dude, you cannot leave it at that. You just cannot.”

Cougar clamps his mouth shut.

“Okay, okay, fine. On with the magical mystery tour. Okay, so in this other TV show--” Jake starts rambling about Star Trek and Star Wars and Babylon Five and things Cougar has never heard of before. It does keep Cougar alert and baffled and interested while he’s driving, which helps.

At the next stop, Jake gets out without fuss, hits the restroom, goes to the ATM on the side of the station, and pulls out a surprising amount of cash. He wanders back to the truck and gives most of it to Cougar, and rolls in under the blankets again. Cougar pulls out of there smoothly and puts a lot of mileage behind them, with a few freeway junctions, before he dares to stop again.

Cougar is about to put the truck in gear again when he pauses long enough to tell Jake, “When the street fair EMTs called the phone numbers in my wallet, my aunt drove down and got me. My grandmother gave me herb teas and taught me how to palm read. Her teas worked better on my seizures than anything else I tried. She willed me her trailer and nobody else wanted it, they think it’s haunted.”

“Maybe because it’s got all these places to hide in?”

“You wouldn’t be the first person who got help.”

“So, seizures, huh? And you’re driving?”

Cougar shrugs with one shoulder. “It got better. Nobody told the license people.”

“How come you have seizures?”

“Too much time in Wade’s unit,” Cougar says, and shifts the truck into motion.

Faintly, he hears mutterings of, “Shit, shit, shit--I knew it was bad--” from Jake. He ignores it, listening instead to the rattle of the trailer and the vibration of the truck. It has needed alignment work for a long time, and driving it this fast for this long is not helping.

Cougar explains this by saying to the steering wheel, “The truck needs work. My brother Jorge has this place outside town, he knows somebody. He’s not going to talk to Rogue.”

Jake shifts around, the blankets hump up so he can peer around at Cougar from between the front seats. “Little history there?”

Cougar grunts.

“Do they know Wade?”

Cougar lifts one hand from the steering wheel, drops it down low, and flips it back and forth in a ‘maybe’ gesture.

Jake frowns. “Don’t tell me, let me guess. Roque knows where all of your family have got to, and which ones you might visit.”

Cougar sighs. “He can find out, easy. He will expect me to do this, he knows the rig has problems, not stopping would be weird.”

“So you drop me somewhere first, like the bus station--”

“No,” Cougar says. “Jorge’s bunch of rugrats might sell that-- _‘ohh, Cougar’s hiding stuff in his rig.’_ In person, parked at their place, even if they’re suspicious, no, the older ones will know it’s too risky to sell you out, it ties back to them too closely.”

Jake gets it much faster than expected. “Won’t they get pissed at you for risking it?”

Cougar shrugs. “Not hiding anything. With luck, it won’t ping the sales radar that maybe Roque wants to know. _‘Hey guys, here’s Jake from one of my old units, just doing him a favor riding on the way to my next carnie gig.’”_

Jake blinks. “Unless they think-- I mean, maybe they might think I’m doing the same thing to you as Roque does.”

“As he did,” Cougar says crisply. He’s a bit amused at the idea that Jake might be capable of it, because he’s pretty sure the kid would apologize six ways from Sunday before ever touching him, if the kid even sleeps with men at all--and he’s okay with that. “Is that how you want to play it?”

“Hell no,” Jake snaps. “I got nothing to prove. I am not on with the nonconsent, but I can fake it if we need to. You know, I don’t have to look these folks in the eye next year. I got zero need to prove I’m such a big bad dude I can beat the crap outta my fellow prisoners, or some shit like I got better reflexes than the average jarhead-- because I can do that with my _brain,_ in my sleep, with one hand tied behind me. Consent, man, it ain’t worth jack shit without that. How _you_ want it to go?”

Cougar feels a wry smile curl up his mouth. “Have to think about it. Some jackets get more attention.”

“No kidding,” Jake says, rummaging around. “Okay, hey, we got Innocenzio and Inez Alvarez, records for AAA Auto Repair for, let’s see-- twelve years, right? Six kids, in arrears for property taxes, liens for credit cards, back bills for a local carniceria, for--”

Cougar can feel the twitch disrupt his grip on the steering wheel. He brakes, heads for the pale sandy margin, slows it down, and hopes the kid doesn’t get it stuck trying to pull out again. He blinks against the wide blurry colors haloing his eyesight, and finally gets the rig stopped, puts on the parking brake. “La incautación,” he says, and hears how it slurs across his lips. Then he’s lying across the wheel, sliding down sideways, unable to speak for the pain stabbing across half his brain, unable to stop the flutter of his boots kicking at the floor boards. He makes the extra effort, tries to say it: “Lock the doors, stay down.”

The last things he hears is the squeal of the door opening next to him, and Jake’s voice. “I thought you said the seizures got better.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


	3. Three of Cups

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This card is about friends, giving or receiving help from your support group.

“No, actually, you don’t owe anybody a thing, Cougar won it at a poker game, sneaky little sucker has _no_ tells that anybody else ever gets,” Pooch’s voice is saying. “Man, oh man, Inez, you make the best _mole_ chicken ever, you let me eat this all day, I’ll just eat you outta house and home.”

Other voices are talking.

“No, no, it was a good thing you called me, that ol’ rig is on its last legs, I told him that last time I fixed the brakes for him,” Pooch says, slightly muffled, as if he’s talking with his mouth full. “Naw, it’s no problem, I’ll drive that and let Jake drive mine, we’ll get it outta your hair. You don’t need that trailer cluttering up your yard, and we none of us want Roque or Wade to notice it, because they will. Naw, shoot, Jake called me the first night, gave me a heads-up how it was going, I sent him over to Cougar in the first place, absolutely the best way to get him outta Dodge.”

A dog starts barking, a door slams and cuts off the sound of the voices talking. Then there’s a puff of dusty air, and vibration, an engine roars to life. The lurch of the rig pulling out onto the road bumps under him and drags a strap against Cougar’s shoulder. He blinks against a soft cloth, a blindfold, listening to familiar rattling noises. The straps are some sort of broad webbing holding him in place on the foldout bed in his own trailer. There’s a hard thing digging into his neck, and he finds it’s his own blocky cell phone. He’s dressed in the same clothes he was driving in, he can’t tell how long he’s been out of it. He puts out a hand, fumbles at the straps, pats at the pillow his head is on. Pushing up the blindfold makes stabs of pain hit his brain like ice picks, so he pulls it back down, tucks in the cell phone into a shirt pocket, and lies there quietly enduring it. It seems like a long time before the motion of the trailer changes, it bumps along and slows, pulls to a halt, but it can’t be more than half an hour.

The door creaks open.

“Hey, Cougar, how ya doin’, buddy?” Pooch’s voice asks.

“ _La migraña,”_ Cougar whispers, not moving.

“Yeah, kinda thought so when ya weren’t bouncing up right away and calling me.” Weight creaks across the floor, a tap runs, ice rattles. “Okay, have some water, that’s gotta be the first thing. Trash can’s right here if you gotta lose it again.”

“How--”

“Let’s just say Jolene had a rough first trimester, and Wade gettin’ me bounced outta the goddamn armed forces was a blessing in disguise, not that he cared.”

There’s a crash of the trailer door opening again. Jake’s voice says, “How’s he doin’?”

“Awake, having a drink of water. Kinda keep the noise down there, he’s got a migraine now. Head trauma, ya know, the gift that just keeps on givin’.”

“Right,” Jake says in a softer voice. “Jolene’s got your truck now. You want me to drive, or have me stay back here?”

“You stay back here and take care a’ Cougar here--you do know how to take care of migraines?--and keep your face down outta sight--and I’ll get this heap on the road again. I got Jolene on the CB, we can keep in touch that way.”

“The couple that caravans together stays together,” Jake says, chuckling.

“You just work on sorting where you wanna pick up the next bit of cash to keep this caravan going without sending up flags for Max’s buncha hackers to pick up on, okay?”

“Yeah, don’t worry, Pooch, we’re good. I’ll get Cougar more water, I won’t touch him unless he knows I’m here, I’ll call you if he starts having any other symptoms or flashbacks or anything. You call me too, anything comes up.”

“Well, fuck, I am not looking forward to dealing with Roque when _he_ catches up with us.”

“Oh, that part’s easy. Cougar’s phone shows he called Jolene, musta been when he started getting migraine haloes, and of course you guys just came flyin’ down to pick him up when his own brother wouldn’t or couldn’t do it, stuck way out there in the desert.”

“Fuckin’ hell, who gets their _last vehicle_ repossessed?” Pooch’s grumbles fade out as the trailer door slams.

Cougar hears himself make a puzzled noise. He’d never, ever hear it from his brother.

Jake sighs. “Seriously, dude, an auto shop where everybody’s grounded? Does not look good. So, yeah, you made an unconscious donation from the poker kitty for Pooch to drive over a used station wagon for Momma Inez, and Innocenzio is in the hospital to get his diabetes treated, and the kids are back enrolled in parochial school, in spite of the way the nuns teach an excessive respect for blind authority--”

Cougar manages a hand movement, holding out his fingers.

“Yeah, no prob, you’re welcome,” Jake says, and a big warm hand closes carefully around Cougar’s cold fingers, warms them up for a moment, lets go again.

“Hurts pretty bad, huh?”

“ _Sí,”_ Cougar says.

“You should probably try to sleep it off, dude, you just wave or grunt if you want anything, I’ll hear it. I mean, even if I’m talking away. Hope you don’t mind my geeking out on the interwebz, talking to myself, it helps with the coding--”

Cougar lifts his hand in a minimal wave, dismissing it all as okay, and whispers, _“Cine._ ”

“Huh? Oh-- cinema, right? You want me to talk about movies? Even if the noise hurts?”

“ _Sí.”_

“Okay, you got it. I dunno what you think of the zombie revolution, but--”

Somewhere in there, during an elaborate disquisition about backdrops and model-building for Fifties kaiju movies in Japan, Jake wanders off into speculation on the political ramifications of having a black lead actor in Romero’s Sixties horror film Night of the Living Dead, and Cougar does fall asleep. He used to find other people’s political convictions boring, until he ran afoul of Wade, and Wade’s Max-oriented agenda, and Max’s terrifying political activism--all that crap about Bombers for Christ and the American Way. It’s incredibly soothing to be talked to sleep by somebody so completely opposed to everything pushed by the hypocrites on Max’s ticket.

“Max, bombs,” Cougar hears himself speaking hoarsely, and wakes himself up.

“Hey, hey, no Max, no bombs here, you’re okay--”

He fumbles up, feels somebody else’s hands push up the blindfold, stroke back his hair out of his face.

“You’re okay, dude, you’re back with us in the land of the living,” Jake’s voice says.

Cougar blinks upward, squints.

“You look like you’ve got a hangover,” Jake says.

“Yeah,” Cougar whispers.

“Want some water? I found a straw, you don’t have to move unless you want to. You want to sit up? Hang on, let me get the straps for you.” Hands ease him around to sitting up. “Yeah, Cougs, I’m not usually the caretaker type, but you seriously need some fluids in you.”

“And out,” Cougar husks.

“Well, yeah. Want to pee in the trash can, or you want to try standing up and getting walked to the head? No way I’m letting you stagger around by yourself, sorry. I mean, if it was anybody else, we’d be sitting in the ER waiting for you to get your skull scanned, right? But Pooch tells you you get a bad reaction to those places.”

“ _Sí,”_ Cougar says, defeated.

“Here, take a sip, see how that works for you.”

The trailer lurches over potholes in the road, and Jake grabs Cougar’s shoulder, and Cougar flinches, but doesn’t try to escape the steadying grip the way he might have done earlier.

“Okay, okay,” Jake says, and eases open his grip, keeps his hand hovering but not actually touching. “Okay, here, drink a sip.”

Cougar takes the water bottle, puts the straw in his mouth, swallows three slow sips, waits for his insides to react. “Walk,” he says, and hands the bottle back to Jake. Then he sorts out the tiresome bits where old injuries have stiffened up and need stretching before he can actually put his full weight on them.

“Mommas don’t let your boys grow up to be cowboys,” Jake half-sings it, hovering, with one arm out easy to grab if Cougar wants to lean on it.

Cougar huffs out a breath, agreeing. Also, leaning on the arm. He’s okay once he’s got over to the regular path of leaning spots he uses to steady himself getting around the trailer, the places he grabs onto when he’s ill, when he’s stiff on a cold morning, when he’s blind with migraine, when he’s otherwise incapable of doing anything.

“I’m good,” he says at last, propping one hand on the little sink in the bathroom, swaying as the trailer hits more potholes. But his knees buckle and lurch sometimes. He’s not used to the motion of it actually on the road, since he’s always been the one driving.

“Dude, if you fall down, Pooch will have my hide, and Jolene will tan it with salt,” Jake says.

Cougar finds himself grinning crookedly.

“Yeah, I know, like, could I actually catch you in time before you bashed up your head? I mean, bashed it _again?”_ Jake puts on a high parental tone. “Do I have to come in there?”

“ _Sí,”_ Cougar says, just because he can.

“You’re ridiculous and cruel,” Jake says.

“ _Sí,”_ Cougar says.

“With a weird sense of humor,” Jake adds, but he crowds in next to Cougar.

Cougar looks up without shifting his head, because that would hurt. “And you are very large.”

“This is true,” Jake agrees. “So now what?”

Cougar turns away from Jake. He taps his own shoulders. “Your hand here. The other one, here.”

“Okay,” Jake says, resting those big palms on top of Cougar’s collarbones. His thumbs rest along Cougar’s shoulderblades. Yes, those are seriously big hands. Warm, too.

Cougar runs the tap, washes his face and hands gingerly, dries them off. Then he unzips, relieves himself noisily, waits a moment through an inconvenient bounce and shudder of the trailer. Jake’s hands slide around to grip onto his upper arms instead, ready to lift his weight right off the floor if necessary. Even grabbing awkwardly from behind like this, he clearly could. Finally Cougar tucks himself in, zips up again. Then he turns slowly, letting the hands come along with him, and washes again. He feels Jake shift around to give him room, and they emerge back into the kitchen area.

Cougar tracks along his leaning route, makes it back to the bed despite several dangerous jerks and bumps in the road. He makes it down to sitting safely, with Jake’s grip closing much firmer on his arms, and then Jake releases him finally. Cougar doesn’t dare sag back against the wall, not with the way it is shuddering and jumping.

Jake sits down next to him, swaying in place.

“Damn, he’s driving this thing awfully fast,” Jake says, hands fretting with his phone instead.

“ _Sí,”_ Cougar says, and leans instead into Jake’s side, because it’s softer, and more reliable.

Jake shifts, puts his arm around Cougar’s back, tucks his hand down around Cougar’s waist, threads his fingers into the belt loops on Cougar’s jeans. “Better?”

“ _Sí.”_

“You got your eyes shut? You want more water, or lie down with the blindfold?” Jake is texting something on his phone with one hand, not apparently slowed down by talking or by having one arm occupied holding Cougar in place.

“ _Agua,”_ Cougar says.

“Would aspirin or anything help?”

“A hammer,” Cougar says.

“You’re getting water and another lie down,” Jake says, putting the phone in a pocket. He reaches out, puts the water bottle in Cougar’s hand. “No hammer. Next stop, you’re getting some sweet fizzy stuff to settle your tum and get some sugar into you. Mainly because I already drank everything you had in here. Dude, are you just living on dried beans and cornmeal?”

“No.”

“Oh, uh huh, I get it-- free pop, cotton candy and overcooked leftover hot dogs, right?”

Cougar just leans his head over tiredly into the big warm shoulder. It makes his neck muscles complain, but it steadies his skull and that’s better.

Jake takes the bottle out of his hand, sets it aside.

“ _¿Y tal vez de café?”_ Cougar says. After a slow moment, he says, “Coffee.”

“Next stop after that one, if you’re doing okay, for sure, because I’m feeling deprived too, and normally allowing my caffeine level to become this diluted with plain old ordinary blood would be tragic,” Jake says.

“Not now?” Cougar says, even more slowly.

“Running away from Wade and Roque with a guy who oughta be in an the ER getting his head x-rayed is focusing my limited powers of alertness _amazingly_. After that scenario stops stimulating all the good ol’ flight instincts, then I will crash like the proverbial iceberg plus ship. Minus the fiddlers on the deck. I know, I know, never skip the sound track except for very special moments, like slow-mo at the height of the battle scene in Henry the V--”

Cougar grunts.

“What? Wait, you Philistine, aren’t you fond of arty photography of horse hoofs clobbering hell out of unprotected human bodies?”

Cougar huffs out a disgusted breath through his nose.

“Right, not liking the battle porn, are we? Not fond of fake mayhem on the big screen, or something more specific about it, like horses getting killed?”

Cougar struggles to find the word through the pain clamped tight on his skull. Finally, he says, “Splatter.”

“Ah,” Jake says. “Is it the--”

“ _No mas,”_ Cougar says, turning his head a little.

“You want me to be quiet?”

“ _Imposible,”_ Cougar says. _“Háblame._ Talk. No splatter.”

“So, no more zombies, huh? Okay, here’s a better one--I’m going through reviews of movies that I can send my niece. You’ll like her, she’s awesome, seriously into dinosaurs and dogs and My Little Pony and Studio Ghibli movies--she’s in this soccer league, her team is called the Pansies--”

“Lie down,” Cougar says after awhile.

Jake says, “You want to turn this way? Lie on your side, there’s the pillow under your head. Okay, how about I take off the boots there--”

“No, no,” Cougar says, reaching down. “No.”

“Okay, got it, no touching the boots. What’s the problem?”

“Wade,” Cougar says.

“Okay, but you’re not running away from Wade with your head this bad, no way. Pooch and Jolene and me, we’ve got you. You’re safe. Wade isn’t gonna get through us before you can get your boots on.”

“No,” Cougar says louder.

“It’s all right, I’m not touching the boots. But you gotta take ‘em off some time and left your feet really rest.”

“No,” Cougar says, and grips the sleeve of Jake’s shirt. “No.”

“Okay, it’s okay. I’m going to sit down here next to you, okay? You can hang on if you want, no problem. Easy, take a deep breath. We’re good.” He starts talking about the My Little Pony tv series, rambling on and on and on about it in great detail. Eventually Cougar feels him put a hand under Cougar’s wrist and lift it, moving Cougar’s arm, resting Cougar’s hand down on the pillow by Cougar’s face, and then covering him with a blanket. Cougar utters a sound, protesting something, he doesn’t even know what.

Jake pats him, sits down again next to him, and goes on talking.

That’s okay. That’s a good sign.

Cougar can sleep with that noise rising and falling in regular tides, reassuring him that somebody is alert, aware, sitting guard. It’s exactly how things are supposed to work in field units. Strange thing about that is, he’s never _had_ a unit where he really trusted other guys to guard his sleep.

 


	4. Page of Pentacles

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This card shows a person who is grounded, sensible, cheerful, and shows a young face to the world. In-references to The Princess Bride, such as unlikely Princesses and even more unlikely Pirate Heroes.

“Well, if it isn’t Little Bunny Foofoo, I mean, whatsyourname, Utterbuttertub,” Jake’s voice says in a deep voice. In a shrill high tone, he says, “Oh noooo, no no no, it wasn’t meant to be! This is not right! I cannot marry you, Prince Humperdinck, and here’s a big karate chop to make sure you believe me! Ahhhhh-whoop!” He gives a blood-curdling yelp, and something thumps. There’s a clatter and a crackle of something breaking on the floor.

“That’s not in the book!” says a child’s voice. It’s relayed through some kind of speaker, slightly flat and tinny.

“It could be! She’s been hanging out with Inigo Montoya, don’t forget!”

There’s a trill of childish laughter. “You’re silly!”

“Oh, now, don’t be like that. What would Miss Piggy say?”

“She’d say, Uncle Jake, you’re so bad, you knocked off your glass!”

Jake sighs. “This is true. Good thing I drank it all first. Wait a minute while I sweep it up.”

“Move the laptop so I can see Mister Cougar,” the child demands. “Uncle Pooch told Mom that he’s way skinny, like a skellington.”

“No. Cougar didn’t give permission for just anybody to stare at him while he’s asleep, what kind of monster are you?”

“A cookie monster!”

“More like a cake monster,” Jake says.

“Pleeeease? I wanna seeeee.”

“No, that’s not okay, not without his permission.” Jake’s voice is perfectly calm.

“What if when you’re not watching, he’s a big ol’ chocklit monster who will eat all your Easter bunnies and your Cadbury eggs and your--”

“Oh, like _you_ do?” Jake says, and his voice is amused again.

“Uncle Jaaaaake--”

“Wait,” he says.

There’s some shifting noises, a heavy weight leaves the bed near Cougar’s knees, and a couple of cabinet doors creak open and close. Then he hears the clatter of glass bumped together and clashing into the kitchen trash bucket. Weight settles into the spot at Cougar’s knees again.

Cougar shifts on his side, moves one arm stiffly, squints one eye open. He finds Jake staring at him, mouth open, hands holding an active laptop whose screen shows an extreme closeup of a blue-eyed face peering into the camera. Just the same improbable startling blue as Jake’s eyes, in fact. There are also brightly colored sugar sprinkles scattered about the freckled blonde landscape peering from the laptop screen.

Cougar points. “Show this cake monster.”

The child gives a whoop of triumph, and Jake blinks at him in surprise, and then grins. “My niece Jennie Jasmine Jensen.” He tilts the laptop so Cougar can see the face on the screen better. It’s hard because the face is bouncing up and down eagerly. Jake shakes a big finger at the bouncing face. “Cake monster--sit. Meet Choklit Monster. Chocklit, meet Cake.”

Cougar blinks. “Pooch tattled?”

“Oh, boy, did he,” Jake says. “We were buying snacks at the gas station. I said you looked hungry. Pooch said you look like that because nice people take pity and give you food and chocolate and you stash it in your extra hollow leg and ask for more chocolate. Well, that’s pretty much what he said, only with more rude words. Something about marked cards?”

“Pooch is not very good at poker,” Cougar says.

“Uh huh,” Jake says. “How’s Jolene at poker?”

“Good,” Cougar says, and smiles a little. Just a little. He looks at the child’s face on the laptop. He looks at the shirt she is wearing. There are cartoon ponies on it. Finally he says, “I should be afraid, shouldn’t I?”

There’s the peels of laughter coming, amazingly loud.

“Yes,” Jake says. “Yes, you should.”

 


	5. The Queen of Swords

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Just a card game, riiiight. Jolene doesn't even have to remind Cougar of the historic relationship between the playing card suits and the Minor Arcana of the Tarot.

“Nothing that looks _that_ innocent, that harmlessly cute, could possibly be anything except lethal in ten seconds,” Pooch is saying, and he lays down a card reluctantly.

Laughing Girl sweeps it up and lays down her suite of cards, giggling. She laughs a lot. She has reason to.

“Seven seconds,” Cougar says gloomily, and gets out of danger by way of a pair of eights Pooch discarded some rounds ago, and hasn’t forgiven him for.

“What’s the stakes?” Jolene asks, cracking her knuckles and sitting down next to Laughing Girl.

“Swag,” Jennie Jensen says, scowling deeply at her cards. They fear that she’s deciding whether to lay down her next set or to wait. She also thinks it’s funny to watch grownups hold their breath. “What’s your stake?”

“Candy in the bag,” Jolene says, nodding at the counter where she left the grocery sacks.

“Ooooh,” Jake says, getting up and peering in. “We got some good stuff here--”

“Aren’t you supposed to be watching for Max?” Pooch says.

“Yeah, but it’s on auto right now--”

Jennie lifts her gaze to her uncle, just staring awhile.

Jake mumbles something about checking on things and slinks out of the kitchen again.

“You know, one thing I wanted to ask,” Jennie says, watching Cougar shuffle the deck.

“What’s that?” Jolene asks, adjusting her iced tea and raking up the bangles on her wrists.

Jennie frowns. “Where’d the Ace of Diamonds go?”

Cougar sighs. Yep, it’s confirmed--Jake’s niece is a demon card-counter.

“Back in the deck again now, huh?” Jolene says.

He fans out the cards, pops both red aces ostentatiously out in full view, and tucks them away again, offering the deck to Jolene to cut. She grins at him and rubs her hands. “So is it just practice cheating or for-real cheating?”

Cougar takes the deck back, giving her an offended look. Would he _ever_ cheat for real with children present?

“Ah, c’mon, show some respect, Jennie here is good,” Jolene says.

Cougar grunts. A near-photographic memory, yes, but not learned in very many methods of palming cards. She’s used three of those methods consistently, and hasn’t caught on to the other ways that Cougar is running the game past her, with no intention of winning for himself. Makes it more interesting to see how Pooch can manage to lose in spite of getting help.

“Why aren’t you playing casinos?” Jennie asks Cougar.

Cougar shrugs, dealing.

“Banned,” Pooch says, out of the side of his mouth.

“Oh no, I don’t think so,” Jennie says. “Cougar folds before you catch him.”

Cougar looks up into those bright blue eyes, nods at her once, a respectful dip of the hat brim. Then he smiles and flattens out his cards, face up, in front of Jennie.

“No, no way!” she says, eyes wide.

He tilts up an eyebrow, shrugs again, gathers in cards, starts shuffling the deck again.

“You’ve got a trick middle finger,” Jennie says slowly.

“Bull-riding,” Cougar says, holding out the stiff joint. “Crazy paint quarterhorse,” and he holds out the thumb that dislocates if he leans on it the wrong way. “Stone cold killer bronco stallion, promoter had to shoot him to get him off the clown that saved my life,” and he lifts up his other hand to show three knobbly bent fingers, while the original stiff fingers continue to manipulate the deck smoothly, as if there was never anything wrong with them.

Pooch sighs and throws himself back in his chair with a snort of disgust. “Why do we bother?”

“So Cougar can teach Jennie card tricks, honey,” Jolene says. “Hand me some of those candy bars, and let’s get this deal cut.”

“Twenty per cent for playing StepinFetchit,” Pooch says.

“What, have your rates gone up lately?” Jolene says.

“Ten per cent surcharge for irritating truths,” Pooch says, but he stands up and gets candy for her. More for him, though.

“Wow, they have gone up,” Jolene says, making a surprised face.

Cougar puts the deck down in front of Jolene, and she cuts it.

“Wait a minute--” Jennie says, pointing.

Jolene grins, flips up the Queen of Spades in her fingertips, and shoves it back into the deck. “I wouldn’t say we do a _lot_ of dead time round about three am on my ward, but we do get some hands in on our breaks, pretty regular,” she says.

“Hmmm,” Jennie says, narrowing her eyes. “How good is Max at cards?”

The others freeze in place. Cougar starts dealing cards again.

Jennie peers at him. “You’ve _played_ him.”

Cougar grunts. “Texas Hold ‘Em regional.”

Jennie squints the other eye at him. “Ahhh, c’mon, you can tell us.”

Cougar snorts. Right now, her act falls over as cute. It won’t be cute later on, and he has too much respect for the person she will be to say what he’s thinking.

Jake is suddenly there at Jennie’s shoulder. “My sources have it that he’s a complete sociopath, very few tells, but he thinks he’s better than he is. Distracted rich guy, too much else going on.”

Cougar shrugs. “Doesn’t work hard enough. Plenty of rich guys got the focus.”

“Do you?” Jennie asks.

Cougar blinks at her. “No.”

“How come?” The blue eyes drill in like sapphire lasers.

Cougar smiles a little. “Hour Eighteen, bored.”

Jolene says suddenly, “Not like sitting waiting with a scope, is it?”

Cougar tilts his head. “Oh, maybe close. Max was why I got bounced out, ended up bronc riding.”

Pooch says, “Huh, that’s not how I heard it. Heard you spooked up and took out an entire--”

“Hour Eighteen, thirty-five K or fold, bored silly. Max just spouts fairytales all the livelong day.” Cougar discards an eight and smiles at the Pooch, who’s looking a little stunned at so much chatter.

Then Pooch looks again at the eight, and sputters. “Toaster _crumbs_ and puddles of spilled syrup and blackberry _jam--”_ Pooch says, shedding half his hand as if none of it is worth coaxing along. “Hey, don’t look at me like that, there’s candy on the line.”

“Uh huh,” Jolene says. “You are a mean cruel husband.”

“Manna from heaven!” Jennie singsongs, an odd phrase she must have learned from some older person. She picks up discards, sorts them, and lays them down again in tidy fans.

Cougar lifts one eyebrow in surprise, he hadn’t reckoned on her second or third meld.

“Bored now?” Jennie says.

Cougar cocks up the eyebrow higher. “No,” he says.

“Good,” she says.

Cougar turns his head slightly, looking at Jake. “You warned me.”

Jake holds up his open hands. “I just gave her the basics. Jolene is the evil mastermind round here. I mean, when my sister isn’t in on it. Guess she’s due home in fifteen minutes now.”

“Now _there’s_ a game, when we got the ladies all going,” Jolene says, and lays down four melds. “You ready for that?”

Cougar just smiles, nods to her, and stretches out all his fingers with a luxurious set of crackling noises.

“I’m out,” the Pooch says, waving them off, and he gets up and grabs Jake’s shoulder, propels him into the other room. “Come on bro, outta here, we’re just fresh meat far as they’re concerned.”

“You think I could play Max at one of those tournaments?” Jennie says.

Jolene snorts. “Sure, once you’re in there. It’s getting _in_ there that costs an arm.”

“You know, that’s not so funny when you know she’s a surgical nurse!” Jake yells back from the other room.

“Meat, I toldja,” Pooch says.

“It would not hit him in the pride,” Cougar says gravely to the little girl. “That is what I learned at the table. It makes no dent.”

“Water off a duck’s back?” Jolene says.

Cougar nods.

Jennie scowls down at her cards. She mutters, “Then what _does_ dent him and his smug vampire face?”

“Vampire face, huh? When did you see a picture of him, Jen gal?” Jolene asks.

Jennie shakes her head.

“I warned you about hacking when Jake’s not around to keep an eye out,” Jolene says it so softly that the guys in the other room probably didn’t hear it.

Jennie looks up, still frowning. “I know.”

“Be safe,” Jolene murmurs. “You know how dangerous it gets. You _know.”_

Jennie looks at Cougar then, looks at his hands, looks down. “I know.”

Cougar glances at Jolene, puzzled, and she gives a little negative movement of her chin, warning him to wait.

Jolene says to the girl, “Are you gonna tell him?”

Jennie glances up at Cougar again. “What-- doesn’t he _know?”_

“Jake wasn’t gonna tattle on you,” Jolene says, in a neutral tone. “Left it up to you. It’s not like the rest of us know enough about hacking to protect ourselves. If you don’t tell him, Cougar doesn’t know.”

“But-- but--”

Cougar watches her.

Jennie slides her cards together into a stack in her fingers, fans them out again, three times. Then she says, “Uncle Jake found out one of his laptops got compromised by Company operatives. He was going to use it anyway, just feed it things he wanted them to get, but I-- I was afraid they meant to-- they were going to-- there was lots of--really bad stuff in their back files, I just--I couldn’t let him get killed! So it got out. It got loose. Leaked big enough they tried to shut down this operation in Bolivia where Colonel Clay’s team was supposed to be there with Wade’s team, and Uncle Jake tried to warn--”

“Ahh,” Cougar says. A lot of Bolivian kids formerly used as mules had run away from the drug dealer’s palace just before it got bombed by a Company fighter jet, and then strangely the jet got itself shot down by some ‘puny local rifleman’, not that any Company drone would ever admit that could happen. Ah yes, and most of Wade’s team had disappeared into the jungle. Nobody got all the money accounted for when they investigated that place. It said something odd that Wade hadn’t cut his losses with a dozen suitcases of cash. He could have got free of his horrible bossman Max forever.

Cougar thinks about risks, about long unforgiving institutional memory. Finally he says, “That warning saved a lot of lives. A lot.”

Jennie blinks up at him, and smears away tears with the back of one hand.

“But it was very dangerous to do that,” Cougar says, gazing at her.

“‘s prolly still dangerous,” Jolene says. “They haven’t forgot. Clay sure hasn’t forgot.”

Cougar nods. “None of it hurt Max, either.”

“I _know!”_ Jennie huffs angrily, and glares down at her cards.

Cougar riffles his cards in his fingers idly.

Jolene says then, “I did hear that some of Max’s medical research investments started going bad. Odd rumors. Strange, because normally nobody down at our level knows anything. All very secret, who’s putting money into these things. In the old days, nobody said so if Max put money into something. So how come it changed? How would anybody know Max was involved?”

Jennie wipes her eyes again, and shakes her head.

Jolene looks up from her to Cougar, likewise scowling. “You know _Jake_ had something that got him all riled up. You know that, right?”

“Mmmm,” Cougar agrees. “But _is_ it actually what Jake thought it was?”

Jolene sits back in her chair with a thump. “Huh.”

“ _I heard that!”_ Jake yelps from the other room.

Jolene snorts. “Jake keeps telling us it’s zombies.”

“Sounds like a Max project to me,” Pooch shouts from the other room.

Jolene just snorts again.

“You don’t know how crazy Max is, that’s all,” Pooch insists.

“We do,” Cougar says softly, and it silences all the yelling. He nods to Jennie. “You need to keep an eye out for your Uncle Jake, too.”

“I will,” Jennie says loudly, glaring up at Cougar. Her eyes are still red from tears, but that doesn’t stop her giving him that fierce look. What a fighter she is!

Cougar can’t help it. He smiles at her. “Good.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


	6. The Four of Swords

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This card is about meditating on battles just past, on resting and recuperating. This is a much-needed break in the strife and struggle of the whole suite of Swords cards. Also, Halloween--with zombies.

“Zombies,” Jake intones, holding out his arms stiffly and jerking slightly in place. He frowns into the bathroom mirror.

Jennie reaches for the open pot of red makeup and beckons at her uncle. “Needs more gore.”

Cougar sighs. He endured getting his face completely painted like a sugar skull by Jennie, who is quite an artist with lots and lots of careful dots of color from her Barbie makeup kit. She insisted on it although his face is mostly hidden under his hat.

“You can take your hat off and scare people that way,” Jennie told him solemnly. “See? It’s pretty scary.”

Cougar has the Hat, and his boots, but he’s pretty naked otherwise because he’s all in saggy black stretch fabric that hides very little. It’s painted with glow-in-the-dark bones copied from some antique European print. It was Jake’s costume some time before he joined the military, before he bulked up so much, but it’s too big on Cougar. The limb bones get crinkled, which makes the shapes look broken in the dark. Odd how that makes it all much creepier. He insisted on dragging along his beat up old twelve-string guitar as well, less because it’s in character as a dead Mariachi than to help hide whatever might happen under the stupid black stretch pants. And something might happen, if he keeps standing here watching Jake and Jennie patiently mess with the makeup to get it right. He doesn’t quite understand why his dick is having this extremely rude problem.

It’s certainly _not_ due to any fondness for Jake’s partially-bandaged hospital escapee outfit, which would make great fodder for nightmares. Jake’s zombie costuming is about as far away from sexy as it can get. Far more on the side of _disturbingly realistic._

“More of the gray and the green,” Jennie says firmly, and beckons at Jake.

“You’ll make me look like I barfed on myself,” Jake complains.

“Yeah? Maybe you did, maybe you got all sick and swolled up and exploded and --”

“That would take longer to do it right,” Jake objects.

It’s something about how Jake has to bend down and turn and hold still for his niece to reach him with the green paint. Something to do with their fierce devotion to realism and artistic honesty.

Something.

Cougar shakes his head, turns around, and heads back toward the front door. He walks faster, trying not to hear it, but fails.

“I mean, I’d have to mock up all the viscera and the liver all hanging out, leaking junk--”

Cougar remembers just in time not to rub his forehead, and leans on the jam by the screen door. It’s cold and crisp outside, last sunset light waning. Just outside on the porch, Jolene is bobbing her son on her shoulder gently, humming. Besides the cloth diaper on her shoulder under her son’s head, she’s dressed as a gypsy, with hoop earrings and a big cobwebby black scarf and a deeply crinkled blue skirt with planets and moons on it.

From the bathroom, loud and clear, floats Jake’s voice, saying, “Hey,wouldn’t that be cool, if you could get one of those squirting daisies filled up with fake ichor, and somebody gets too close, you zap them--”

“Have fake blood too,” Jennie agrees.

Cougar steps outside, closes the screen door silently behind him.

“You could drag along a cut off arm with a really big pouch of fake blood or glow fluid or goop stuff or silly string and goosh people with that!” Jennie says.

Cougar glances up at the chuckle from Jolene, and he waves one hand in frustration.

Echoing from the bathroom, Jake’s voice says, “Why not a choice of fluids? Something that big, you could have different trigger buttons, right?”

Jolene snorts. “You got your hands full there, cowboy.”

“ _Sí,”_ Cougar agrees.

“I think Jennie knows more about chemistry than her teachers,” Jolene says. “Roque taught her a few tricks with nitroglycerine, too. They used to blow things up at the old place, before Jake got in trouble with that bunch of Wade’s, and he moved his sister and niece up here closer to us. Jennie used to have Roque wrapped round her little finger.”

Cougar huffs out a laugh, sticks out his chin a little.

“Yeah, like all of you.” Jolene rocks the baby up and down on her shoulder, earns a silly little burping noise from him. “See? Isn’t that better, sweetie? Good.” Then she sobers. “I guess it wouldn’t be too hard for Roque to track them down if he really wanted to.”

Cougar nods.

“So, how much does he want to?” Jolene asks.

“ _No se,”_ Cougar says, spreading his hands wide. “Probably he wishes to display effort, make the big show of it, he doesn’t want it to work. Give him an excuse to fail if he shows up.”

“Hey-- hey, stop right there. Don’t tell me you’re gonna throw yourself on _that_ grenade,” Jolene says.

Cougar looks at her, puzzled. “Why not?”

“Because it would break their hearts if you got hurt,” Jolene hisses it at him. She reaches out and taps his arm. “Jennie’s calling you _Tío_ Cougar, and I haven’t seen my gal Jennifer so calmed down for years. Besides, Jake is just totally gone on you. Totally. All he talks about.”

Jake’s voice floats out of the screen door, coming closer. “Next year, we can mock it up--”

Jolene grimaces, and adds, “I mean, except for zombies. You know that, right?”

Cougar stares at her. Doesn’t move as he’s jostled by Jennie bursting out of the screen door past him, shouting something about what rubber mold material to use for a fake leg.

Jake steps out, closes the front door, locks it, locks the screen door, and pats Cougar on the shoulder. “Everybody ready? You still need me to unfold the stroller, Joe? Okay, we got the bags, we got the flashlights, we got the strobe light radio, we got the red wagon, we got the guitar--” He picks it up out of the pillows in the wagon.

Cougar takes it, slides the strap up over his hat, settles it on his neck, and runs a thumb down the strings, making them hum. He does a couple of arpeggios, checking the tuning. Then he starts playing a ridiculously ornate flamenco set of variations on Michael Jackson’s song _Thriller._

Jennie, in her pink Little Pony dress with pony logos all round the poofy hem, starts dancing to it and waving her plastic flashing Jedi lightsaber.

“Awesome!” Jake shouts, flinging his gore-covered arms wide, and starts dancing with her.

Jolene just starts laughing.

 


	7. The Two of Swords

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes you don't even know a decision is looming at hand.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This card shows a woman holding two swords apart. It may indicate you stand in the middle of a situation as a peacekeeper, or it may indicate a situation where the lull in the fighting won’t last. This card can indicate two opposing ideas or decisions with equally valid arguments. We may want to avoid committing to one or the other, but resolving the decision can’t be put off for long.  
> This is based on the interpretation offered here: 
> 
> http://www.aeclectic.net/tarot/learn/meanings/two-of-swords.shtml

 

“Trick,” says the beautiful dark woman, smiling, and steps back from the black Halloween wreath on her door, tilting her head toward a man. It’s a man Cougar knows all too well.

“Excellent,” Franklin Clay says, and strolls forward onto the sidewalk, glances sideways up at Cougar. “You’re looking good. Jake’s sister been feeding you up, huh?”

Cougar taps a finger at his hat brim in salute.

Clay tilts his head to indicate his lady friend. “Aisha helped me track you guys down.”

In the room behind the woman, a television is playing ‘The Nightmare Before Christmas’. The music reaches a crescendo with the Oogie Boogie Man bellowing at his prisoner, Santa Claus.

“Well, _that’s_ not ominous at all,”Jensen says.

Clay nods at Jolene. “How’s your boy doing?”

“Oh, he’s fine,” Jolene says, shifting the baby’s lolling head on her shoulder. She’s not watching Clay, she’s watching the woman. That’s because Clay’s various girlfriends have built up quite a storied history.

Clay catches the look, and sighs. He catches the ironic lift of Cougar’s left eyebrow, too. He just shakes his head in reply. Then Clay looks past them at Jensen. “Don’t think you slowed down enough to notice on your way out, but I approved that leave you asked for two weeks ago. I hear you’ve been trying to avoid Wade while you’re away. Just as a casual FYI for you, Wade’s got business in Virginia explaining a few details on some old reports, something that came up about… let’s say it happened on time served before he got assigned to us. So long as you answer Roque’s call-ins, you probably won’t be seeing Wade until it’s time to report in, and maybe not then. I guess Roque heard something about how you had plans to go visit Puerte Vallarta and pester a couple of Cougar’s friends down there.”

Jensen blinks.

Clay shrugs, sighs. “I didn’t try explaining why you’d know those guys. Roque and Wade both know you’re a nosey invasive hacking SOB.”

“Let me guess, Cougar’s friends don’t _like_ Wade?” Jensen says, slowly turning his head.

Jolene rolls her eyes, turns, and starts walking away from the house.

Clay just grins. “What, was it AKs or just grenades last time?”

Cougar makes a hand-wobble that it might have been a little of both, shrugs one shoulder.

“How does he even do that?” Jolene says, and hip-checks Cougar on the way past.

Cougar just grins at her and touches forefinger to hat brim in respectful salute to her back.

“They just hate to admit they’re lousy at cards,” Jolene says.

Cougar snorts. “Wishful thinking.”

“I blame the smirk, personally.” Clay grins.

“Hey, it always works on you,” Jolene says.

“Used to,” Clay says.

“How’d you fix that?” Jolene asks, pausing by the red wagon.

“Don’t play cards with Cougar,” Clay says.

“Or with Jake’s niece,” Jolene says, rummaging in a big diaper bag.

Clay glances over at the little girl twirling in circles to make her dress flare out. She’s pretending that the grownups are being boring. Cougar’s pretty sure she’s got a very precise eye out for all of the key facts and expressions.

Cougar tilts the hat brim in agreement when Clay looks at him.

Clay whistles. “That good?”

“She wants to play cards with Max,” Cougar says.

Since the child is twirling while singing words to the theme music for a scifi tv series that got cancelled before she was born, the obvious geek-cred similarities with Jake the Hacker are not hard to spot. Not for somebody as bright as Clay normally is.

“Her and about half of the Joint Chiefs,” Clay says, shaking his head.

“Let me guess--other half want to order somebody to shoot the sumbitch,” Jolene says.

Clay grunts in a noncommittal way. He can’t badmouth his command to her, not the way he might lay it down chatting to Pooch. But Cougar can read it pretty clearly: _That’d require a smarter political organization underneath them._

 _Or fewer liars,_ Cougar thinks, and inclines the hat a degree to acknowledge that he heard what Clay didn’t say. Clay heard what Cougar wasn’t saying either. They’re simpatico like that. Shame he only got to serve a fewer loaner missions for Clay, they could have worked out nicely together as a regular assignment.

“Hear Veracruz is nice this time of year too,” Jolene says. “I mean, if anybody was asking me.”

Cougar grunts in a fairly negative manner.

Clay lifts both eyebrows at him, waiting.

“Okay, I’ll bite, why is that--” Jolene lays down the baby, starts whipping through her diapering routine at double speed.

Aisha cranes her neck subtly, probably to see Jolene’s hands better, as if she’s wondering if there might be a gun or two in that bag and not just baby gear. That innocent-looking mom is the Pooch’s wife, after all. But Jolene is unlikely to unwrap her kid if she thinks they may have to make a serious duck and run for it.

“Hot,” Cougar says at last.

“Hot? As in, so hot even your really rough friends don’t like it?” Jolene says.

“Max left a real bad smell down there,” Aisha says.

“As in, rough for anybody who might have _anything_ to do with Max,” Clay says.

Jolene tapes up the new diaper, wraps up the baby, and starts stuffing things away in the bag. Irritably, she demands, “Did Max have _help_ to mess up?”

Everybody looks at Jake.

Aisha shrugs. “It was pretty spectacular.”

Clay just grins, wider and wider.

Jolene lifts the baby up on her shoulder, pats him, and points her finger warningly at Jake: _Talk._

“We-elll, problem is, Max likes to skip out on his bills, always leaving other folks on the hook, and after awhile the narcos down there twigged. Yep, just don’t like it. I mean, what’s a few Abrams tanks between friends, ya know, but when you start messin’ with the product schedules and shit--” Jake waves his arms around. Bits of costume foam fall off. Very zombie-like.

Aisha steps out in front of the black door wreath, looking like she’s all cheekbones and cool angles and leather and boots. Armed in all kindsa strange places, too. “That was Wade,” she says.

“Ahh, was it really? Got the impression he can’t tie his shoes by himself on scam deals like--” Jake glances at his niece, and shuts up.

Clay tilts his head a degree. “Got any leads on Max’s cash float?”

Jake growls, glaring at Clay over the silly round yellow Lennon glasses he insisted on wearing over the zombie makeup. Positively _growls._ “If I did, you think I’d be standing here arguing about it?”

The sound does something strange to Cougar’s insides. Makes the heat flare up in his belly, start curling in his balls. When was the last time he ever heard _anybody_ growl back at the likes of Franklin Clay?

“Well, that’s the thing,” Clay says. “Some folks think you might.”

“Aisha, maybe?” Jake sticks out his chin like he’s asking to get it popped with somebody’s fist.

She just snorts, waves it off in disgust, and stalks back inside the house. When Aisha dismisses somebody, apparently she does it with economy, if not grace. Probably the same way she fights. Or shoots people. All the pop-scars from a rifle scope recoil hitting her in the eyesocket are old. Also, on both sides of her face, which makes it more interesting.

Really old scars.

Nearly as old as Cougar’s, which is saying something.

Clay sighs. Yeah, bet he hasn’t kept many secrets from Aisha.

“Where’d you pick her up, Clay?” Jolene demands.

“Bolivia,” he says. “Roque and I got to hanging at the cockfights, waiting to get papers. She had ‘em, wanted a competent escort.”

“Don’t tell me, the narcos don’t like _her_ either,” Jolene snaps.

Clay shrugs. “Come to find out, about six years ago the Company started trying to blow up her father, destabilize the whole scene, and I guess last year they gave up and...got way too obvious about it.”

“ _Her father--”_ Jake cuts a glance at his niece, and shuts his mouth abruptly.

Clay tilts up a black eyebrow, and that isn’t a nice smile at all. Of course he heard what Jake didn’t say; after all, he’s been the CO of the Losers for awhile.

“Don’t tell me,” Jolene says. “You and Roque and Aisha are _all_ running away from Wade and that dumbshit crew of his.”

“More like twitching the bait to get at Max,” Aisha says, and reappears with a bowl of candy. “Trick or treat. Wanna play?”

Jake stares at her, mouth open.

Cougar takes two steps forward, looks at the candy in the bowl, stirs it around. Then he picks out one piece of candy, nods thanks at Aisha, unwraps the candy, and bites into it. “Mmm,” he says, nodding at Jake that it passes muster.

“Okay,” Jake says. “Okay, Jen. Don’t forget--”

Jennie gives a big sigh, nodding.

“--to say thankyou,” Jolene finishes. She waves that Jennie also has her permission to go receive some of the minibars in the bowl.

Jennie carefully thanks Aisha, who nods in reply. Then Jennie says, “Can you tell Uncle Roque I said hi, and I’ve been practicing with the knife a lot so he can check on how I’m doing?”

“I will,” Aisha says, without blinking. _Of course_ Roque would have given the girl a knife, best gift for a lady ever, the big softy.

“Losers, man,” Jolene sighs.

“We’ll talk later,” Jake says, narrowing his eyes at Clay.

“Happy Halloween,” Clay says.

 


End file.
